You heard about the Berkeley Overmind?
Yes.
A single mind has a limited amount of capacity to focus on events simultaneously.
This is a statement about your mind (ok, human minds), not about minds in general. There's no law saying that minds can't have multiple simultaneous trains of thought.
Emergent intelligence does not.
A unified mind can always simulate separate agents. Separate agents cannot simulate a unified mind. If the separate agents all have simultaneous access to the same information that the unified mind would, then they cease being separate agents. In my book, there is no longer a distinction.
There's a big difference between separate agents all running in one brain (e.g., possibly humans) and separate agents in separate brains (ants).
(I might not respond again, I have a bot to write!)
A unified mind can always simulate separate agents.
To within its available resources, sure. But that's under the assumption that there's a categorical difference between multiple agents instantiated on separate hardware and multiple agents instantiated on a single piece of hardware.
Separate agents cannot simulate a unified mind.
Actually, that's the entire notion behind the Society of the Mind: there's no such thing as a "unified mind". Only separate agents that operate as a wholistic system.
...If the separate agents all have simultaneous a
Aichallenge.org has started their third AI contest this year: Ants.
I mentioned this in the open thread, and there was a discussion about possibly making one or more "official" LessWrong teams. D_Alex has offered a motivational prize. If this interests you, please discuss in the comments!